You probably think you need a perfectly lit studio and a bowl of wax fruit to start. You don't. Honestly, most people overcomplicate the whole thing before they even pick up a 2B pencil. Still life is basically just looking at stuff—really looking—and then trying to trick the human eye into seeing 3D depth on a 2D piece of paper. It’s a magic trick.
Grab a coffee mug. Or an egg. Seriously, an egg is the ultimate boss battle for beginners because it has no edges, just subtle shifts in light. If you can master easy still life drawing with a single egg, you can draw a cathedral. But most beginners rush into drawing a complex bouquet of flowers and then wonder why it looks like a chaotic mess of scribbles.
Stop overthinking the "art" part. Focus on the geometry.
The Secret Geometry of Boring Objects
Everything is a cylinder, a sphere, or a cube. That sounds like something a high school art teacher screams at you, but it's the truth. When you look at a wine bottle, don't see "wine bottle." See a long cylinder stacked on a wider cylinder with a tapered cone in the middle. If you can draw a rectangle and an oval, you can draw a bottle.
The biggest mistake? Outlines.
Real objects don't have black lines around them. Look at your hand right now. There is no black wire tracing your fingers. There is only a change in color or value where your skin ends and the background begins. When you’re doing an easy still life drawing, try to lose the habit of drawing "fences" around your objects. Instead, think about where the light hits and where the shadow hides.
Lighting is 90% of the Work
If you’re sitting under a fluorescent ceiling light, your drawing will look flat. Period. Professional artists like Cesar Santos or the late, great Richard Schmid always emphasize a single, strong light source. Why? Because it creates a "terminator line"—that crisp boundary where light turns into shadow.
Set up a desk lamp on one side of your object. Now you have a highlight, a mid-tone, a core shadow, and a cast shadow. Suddenly, that boring coffee mug has drama. It has a "weight" on the table. Without that single light source, you’re just guessing where the shadows go, and the human brain is surprisingly good at spotting "fake" shadows.
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Composition: Don't Put It in the Middle
People have this weird instinct to put their object right in the dead center of the page. It’s boring. It’s static. It’s what a camera does when it’s taking a mugshot.
Try the Rule of Thirds. Imagine a tic-tac-toe grid on your paper. Place your main object where the lines intersect. Or better yet, let part of the object "fall off" the page. It makes the viewer feel like they’re looking at a slice of a larger world, rather than a specimen in a jar.
- Overlapping is your friend. Put a small plum in front of a tall vase. It creates instant depth.
- Vary the heights. Three bottles of the same size? Snore. One tall bottle, one squat jar, and a crumpled napkin? Now we're talking.
- The "L" Shape. Arrange your items so they lead the eye in a path.
I’ve seen students spend three hours drawing a single apple. That's fine, but you'll learn more by drawing ten apples in ten minutes each. Gesture drawing isn't just for figures; it works for still life too. It forces you to see the "big shapes" instead of obsessing over a tiny bruise on the apple skin.
The Tools You Actually Need (And the Ones You Don't)
You don't need a $100 set of professional graphite pencils. In fact, a cheap No. 2 pencil and some printer paper are enough to start. However, if you want to make easy still life drawing feel a bit more professional, get a kneaded eraser.
Standard pink erasers are abrasive. They tear the tooth of the paper. A kneaded eraser is like grey putty. You can shape it into a fine point to "pick up" highlights or dab it against a dark area to lighten a shadow without smudging it into a grey blur. It’s a game changer for creating texture.
Values: The 1 to 10 Scale
Squint your eyes. No, seriously—squint until you can barely see the room. When you squint, the colors disappear and you only see "values" (how light or dark something is).
- Value 1: The white of the paper (your brightest highlight).
- Value 5: The actual color of the object in normal light.
- Value 10: The deepest, darkest shadow directly under the object.
Most beginners stay in the 3 to 7 range. They're afraid to go dark. But if you don't have deep blacks, your whites won't pop. It’s contrast that creates the illusion of reality. If your drawing looks "foggy," you probably need to grab an 8B pencil and get aggressive with those shadows.
Why Your Circles Look Like Footballs
Drawing ellipses (circles in perspective) is the hardest part of easy still life drawing. When you look at the top of a glass, it’s not a circle; it’s an oval. And as that glass moves closer to your eye level, that oval flattens out.
Common mistake: Drawing the "corners" of the oval pointed. An ellipse is always rounded. Even if it's super thin, those edges are curved. Practice drawing "ghost circles" in the air before your pencil touches the paper. It helps your hand find the natural rhythm of the curve.
Forget Perfection, Aim for Character
Some of the most famous still life paintings in history—think Paul Cézanne—are technically "wrong." His tables are tilted at impossible angles. His oranges look like they're about to roll off the canvas.
But they feel alive.
There is a difference between a technical architectural drawing and an artistic still life. Don't worry if your lines are a bit shaky. That shakiness is your "handwriting." It’s what makes your art yours. If you wanted a perfect representation, you’d just take a photo with your phone.
Dealing with Perspective Without a Ruler
Perspective scares people. They think of vanishing points and horizon lines. For a simple still life, you just need to understand "eye level."
If you are looking down on a bowl of fruit, you see more of the inside of the bowl. If the bowl is at eye level, it looks like a flat line. Always check where your eyes are in relation to the object. If you move your head even two inches, the entire perspective changes. This is why artists sometimes tape a "spot" on the floor or sit in the exact same chair every time they work on a piece.
Consistency is key.
Actionable Steps to Improve Your Sketches Right Now
If you want to actually get better at easy still life drawing, stop reading and start doing. Here is a specific path for your next hour:
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- The Single-Object Sprint: Find one object with a matte surface (not shiny). A potato, a piece of bread, or a wooden block. Set it under a single lamp.
- The 5-Minute Block-In: Use very light lines to map out the height and width. Don't draw details. Just draw the "container" the object fits into.
- The Squint Test: Squint your eyes and find the darkest shadow. Fill it in with a solid, dark grey. Don't worry about blending yet.
- The Highlight Pop: Use your eraser to pull out the one spot where the light hits most intensely.
- The "Grounding" Shadow: Draw the shadow the object casts on the table. Without this, your object is floating in space.
Instead of trying to draw a "masterpiece," try to draw 50 "bad" drawings this week. Quantity leads to quality. You'll notice that around drawing number 15, your hand starts moving more confidently. You'll stop second-guessing every stroke.
The best part about still life? The models never move, they don't complain about being tired, and they're always available in your kitchen. Grab a pencil. Start with the egg. Work your way up to the coffee mug. Everything else is just a variation of those two shapes.